Love its new looks or or hate them, production of the 2014 Jeep Cherokee is scheduled to begin later this year, and parent company Chrysler Group has high hopes for it already. The 2014 Jeep Cherokee, which will officially bow next week at the 2013 New York International Auto Show, will be built alongside the Wrangler at Chrysler Group's production facility in Toledo, Ohio. Not even a single unit has been built yet, but Jeep is estimating that its Toledo facility will churn out 500,000 Wrangler and Cherokee units annually.The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority is hoping this tall production order attracts automotive suppliers back to the area. For over 100 years, Willys-Overland Motors, the automotive manufacturer who first built Jeeps for the United States military, operated on a 111 acre plot of land, and now the Port Authority has new plans for the land. Back in 2010, the Toledo Port Authority bought the 111 acre parcel of land for $95 million from Old Carco Liquidation Trust, the company that held onto Chrysler's assets while it was restructuring after bankruptcy. This soon-to-be industrial park is only two miles away from the Toledo assembly facility that pieces together Jeep Wrangler and Cherokee models and the Port is banking on this to attract automotive suppliers back to the area.As it stands now, the plan is to build six buildings with a total of 650,000 square feet of space for production is expected to yield itself at this new industrial site. Right down the road, the Toledo assembly facility utilizes almost 4 million square feet of space, and Chrysler Group is hoping to smash the number of Jeep Liberty models built in 2012 (75,000). Chrysler is hiring 200 workers to help with increased Jeep Wrangler production and another 1,105 workers are expected to be brought in to build the all-new Cherokee. This may bode well for those looking for a job at this proposed automotive supplier site. The 2014 Jeep Cherokee is expected to help the off-road specialist hit its goal of selling more than 800,000 units by next year.Source: The Detroit Free Press

New Car Price QuoteFind the best car prices using our free quote tool.